Having all of that necessary stuff done, it was time to get working on a fleet in anticipation of a weekends gaming with some like minded privateers.

“What the hells is that smell? Sigmars instep Dimitri! You need to take a look at your diet man… oh right… sorry I suppose… but it usually IS you”

The plan for MoW from the start was to tie it to the 28mm fantasy forces that currently appeal to me an’ me scurvy co-collaborators. As explained in a previous post, that meant that a Plague Fleet composed almost exclusively of Nurgle ships for me. Certainly no ships from other Chaos Powers, not to start with at the very least anyway.

A haunted plagueship technically I think, and Nurgle Plagueships (capital “P”) are not full of living dead, but as it’s likely that if you are reading this that you know your zombies from your poxwalkers, I won’t go into it further.

A Nurgle plague fleet is mentioned in the new Age of Sigmar rulebook interestingly enough. The description ties back nicely into how I planned the composition of my fleet: a selection of Nurgle ships with various diseased sea monsters in tow.

From Age of Sigmar Core Book (2018)

Having my take on a game or setting match exactly with the published version isn’t a requirement for me, but I do like it when they align like that.

L to R: Deathgalley, Plagueship, Plaguecrusher

Followers of Nurgle have access to three types of vessel in Man O’ War: Plagueships, Plaguecrushers and Deathgalleys. Deathgalleys are available to Chaos fleets of any variety, but as they are given god specific “Reward” cards, they enhance rather than spoil the theme.

I never tire of this image.

Technically I could use a Silver Tower of Tzeentch to get a magic user and still adhere to the “Nurgle Fleet List”, but screw that (1993, WTF were you thinking?), I’m not sullying the theme with Tzeentch stuff, of all things. I will be house ruling to get Nurgle Sorcerers in my fleet, thank you very much.

I painted one of each squadron and a single Plagueship in my first maritime push, totalling seven ship models, an auspicious total for devotees of Papa Nurgle.

Plaguecrusher Squadron “Detritus”

Armed with a catapult that fires giant lumps of contagious snot and featuring a weird looking siege tower like forecastle and two types of propulsion, the Plaguecrusher design is extra peculiar visually. I was concerned right up until the moment that I added the sails that they wouldn’t look like little ships, but the sails tied it all together.

Deathgalley Squadron “Flotsam”

Deathgalleys are allowed in all the Chaos fleets, but as each one gets a Chaos Reward card of an appropriate power, they end up having quite a bit of character. They also provide some regular cannon in a fleet full of poo throwing catapults. My buddy Mr Saturday recently painted a set of these in Khorne colours, if you want to take a look.

Plagueship: The Black Stool

The Seventh Sons needed a flagship for Captain Turds-aye (Commodore Turds-aye?) and The Black Stool was commissioned.

I really quite like the Plagueship sculpt, largely because I want to play games with fantasy pirate ships and that design keeps the silhouette of a pirate ship pretty closely, excluding the paddles.

Like the Dire Straits terrain set, The Seventh Sons fleet was largely painted with drybrush techniques plus washes. The base was made by indenting some putty with a rounded tool and painting it as per the Dreadfleet base painting tutorial in White Dwarf #382, October 2011.

The sails were made by taking photos of the blank sails and adding some suitable imagery and other colours via basic image manipulation apps on my phone and then printing them out. I planned to hand paint a few bits on the sails here and there, to tie them back to the ship a little more, but decided it wasn’t necessary in the end. I did spray the back of the sheet with Death Guard Green spray, to give the rear of the sails a fairly neutral colour, rather than A4 white.

I’m pretty happy with how the sails turned out, even though some designs worked better than others. But y’know, this is my hobby, not my job, so no time for prototypes. The next batch will hopefully be nicer.

The Seventh Sons summon plague stricken colossi from the depths to further their dire aims.

Hopefully the next update on the Seventh Sons will be an account of them sweeping the aelven fleet of P3 before them.

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25 Responses

The nurgle ships are the best in the Wan-O-War universe! 😀 very nice modern take on the old 80’s paint job, you made them look more realistic and less cartoony as they looked in the old white Dwarfs! But that said I still like the way the ‘eavy metal team painted it back in the day! Your are more in keeping with GW’s newer approach to painting 🙂

I normally have quite gaudy tastes vongutenboom, so I do still like the classic MoW Plagueship colour scheme to an extent.

MoW is very goofy in numerous places, with shark faced ships, ships with giant bells, ships with big hammers, a boat with a face and wings etc. Even in comparison with the often very OTT aspects of the Warhammer settings and games, MoW often looks pretty daft.

With that in mind, I decided to let the outlandish sculpts tell the story of the fantasy elements and stick to reasonably “realistic” palettes on the ships. In this case, I think that it worked. The ships look reasonably plausible, even in the context of sea monsters etc.

A little plausibility in a situation like this goes a long way I think. With goofy model projects I do often enjoy pushing for extra daft, but the rest of the time I try to strike a balance between fun and “plausibility” (whatever that means in this context).

Based on the feedback that I have got on these to date, I think that I hit the sweet spot with these.

Yea no problem, I enjoy getting to be apart of this hobby gaming community I love seeing how other people take on their miniatures and projects it’s nice to get to talk to other artists in the hobby. I like picking peoples brains so to speak on the takes on things similar to your project here. Not only is it good to get feedback it’s feels good to give feedback, I have found that if I post a project that’s wip, some times I’ll get feedback that actually helps me tackle it from a different angle of approach. Not to mention you right about when your on to a good idea and you share it an people like it a lot it feels good. You and Azazel have both inspired me on many projects, it helps me keep pushing myself to do better! Like I don’t know if you saw my post but I got over my fear of Airbrushing! And it’s been improving my paint jobs a bit! ;P thanks for doing what you do!

The blogging part of the process has improved my enjoyment of the hobby an awful lot, largely for the reasons that you mention.
I have also improved my painting and over the years in direct response to engaging with other hobbyists.

I took photos of the blank sails from the MoW catalogue pages, I used free image manipulation apps available for my Samsung S7 to add appropriate images and blend in some colour fades and other things, put them in a document and sized them appropriately, printed them out and stuck them to the model.

The whole paper-sails-and-separate-masts aspect of the project was pretty nerve wracking. I didn’t really know if it was going to work out until the last possible moment, so I was genuinely delighted when the combination of colours and tones worked out as well as it did.

It ended up looking like the blend of fantasy and realism for my tastes.

A lot like painting miniatures, getting the sails to that level is a collection of several simple steps, none of which are complex in themselves. After a certain point elements start to “click” with each other and it stops being a collection of colours and shapes and starts to (hopefully) look a bit more like the item that its supposed to represent.

In short, I find that a large number of small steps gives better results than a shorter number of large steps. Not that you asked anyway Mark 😀